be able worthily to embody Humanity except in the form of woman." The three types-the mother, the wife, and daughter-bring before us, in private life, the ideal of Humanity. Together they represent "the three natural modes of human continuity-the past, the present, and the future-as also the three degrees. of solidarity which bind us to our superiors, our equals, and our inferiors." The principal Angel, the

Women

Mother, is, of course, common to both sexes. must worship husband and son, on the same grounds as men worship wife and daughter.2 Worship is equally due to these types of the family, living or dead. Death only exalts the character of the worship, which then becomes subjective instead of objective. Generally one of the three types has become subjective, while one or both of the others remain objective. "The two influences, subjective and objective, are normally mixed, and our homage is more efficacious from the mixture, for it secures a better combination of strength and clearness of imagery, with consistency and purity of feeling."

4

time above the degrading

Each man should pray to his angels three times aday-on getting up, before going to sleep, and in the midst of his daily work. "The worship of Humanity raises prayer for the first influence of self-interest.' Our first prayer should be the longest of the three, lasting for an hour, chiefly communicative, but in part also effusive. In the other prayers effusion occupies the chief place. The total length of our daily worship should reach two hours: it need not exceed this, even in the case of those

1 Cat. Pos., p. 119.

3 Ibid., p. 122.

2 Ibid.

* General View of Positivism, p. 374.

"who find it useful during the night to repeat the prayer appropriated for mid-day." 1 Comte is very emphatic in condemning those who would grudge so much time abstracted from ordinary work for meditation and prayer. No medieval or modern evangelical pietist could speak with more unction of the necessity of stated and prolonged devotions. Nor must our prayer merely be an inward breathing, the "soul's sincere desire." It must take the form of words. We may use fixed forms, in order to secure more regularity; but these forms must in all cases be our own composition. If not originally drawn up by him who uses them, they will lose much of their efficiency.2

So much for the personal worship of Humanity. The domestic worship is embodied in seven sacraments under the successive names of Presentation, Initiation, Admission, Destination, Marriage, Maturity, Retirement, Transformation, and lastly Incorporation. The first gives a systematic consecration to every birth. The parents present the child to the priesthood, and come under solemn engagement to fit it for the service of Humanity. The second sacrament has the name of Initiation, as marking the entrance into public life, when the child passes at the age of fourteen from the training of its mother to that of the national priesthood. Seven years later comes the sacrament of Admission, when the preparatory priestly education is completed, and the life service of Humanity is opened to the youth. His choice of a profession, however, may be still delayed till his twenty-eighth year, when the sacrament of Destination sanctions the career which he has chosen. Unhappily there will be

1 Cat. Pos., p. 125.

2 Ibid., p. 110.

those even in the normal state of humanity who are unfitted for its service by extremely defective organisation, which education has failed to correct, and these unfortunates are condemned to a perpetual infancy. The priesthood are the judges' of such castaways, and in the discharge of their duty will not hesitate to have recourse to measures of severity, although this severity must never extend beyond the spiritual domain. Marriage follows the choice of a career, and is with Positivism as with Catholicism one of the most significant of the sacraments. So far as it is a religious ordinance, men can only be admitted to it when they have completed their twenty-eighth year; women when they have reached the age of twenty-one. These limits of age must not be lowered for either sex, save on very exceptional grounds. Marriage when once entered upon is indissoluble, save in one casethe condemnation of one of the married persons to loss of social position for an infamous offence, the unhappy case of the husband of the lady, Madame Clotilde de Vaux, in whom Comte first recognised, and after her death continued to worship, the ideal of Humanity. In no other case is divorce to be allowed. An extreme urgency like this may justify it, just as circumstances may justify falsehood, or even murder; but in itself it is an act not to be tolerated.2 The full development of the human organism, which is fixed. for the age of forty-two, is celebrated by the sacrament of Maturity. This is a critical epoch in the Positivist theory of life. Up to this time life is still of a pre

1 "You may express all the social attributions of the priesthood by adopting the Biblical name of 'judge.'"-Cat. Pos., p. 280.

2 Cat. Pos., p. 323.

paratory character, and the faults into which we have fallen, even of a serious character, are not beyond reparation; but from this time forwards we can hardly ever repair any faults we commit, either in reference to ourselves or others. It is well, therefore, that a solemn ceremony should be imposed upon the servant of Humanity at this grave stage of his career. Twentyone years after the human organism attains to its full maturity, or at the age of sixty-three, comes the seventh sacrament of Retirement. Our active service. to Humanity is then completed; we retire from the stage of public duty, and in doing so exercise one last act of high authority, by naming our successor, subject to the sanction of the priestly authority. Then comes the last sad rite in which we ourselves engage, known in the Positivist ritual by the name of Transformation. "It is to be the substitute for the horrible ceremony of the Catholic ritual. Catholicism, free from all check in its anti-social character, openly tore the dying person from all his human affections, and made him stand quite alone before the judgment-seat of God." But Positivism surrounds the dying with the sympathy of a "just appreciation," and mingles the "regrets of society with the tears of the family." It generally holds out, too, "the hope of subjective incorporation." It must not, however, be in a hurry to encourage such a hope. This the final sacrament does not come till seven years after death, when the finished life stands out at length from all the accidents of temporary passion, and may be finally estimated according to its true value.

1

Then, "if the priesthood

pronounces for incorporation, it presides over the

1 Cat. Pos., p. 135.

transfer with due pomp of the sanctified remains from the common burial-place of the city to the permanent resting-place in the sacred wood that surrounds the temple of Humanity." The incorporated dead are thenceforth glorified. They become subjective members of the sacred existence. If the priesthood pronounce against incorporation, then the dead are cast out from the subjective Paradise, into which enter not only human beings, but also, quite consistently, animals who have deserved well of the human species.2

The public worship of Humanity must be touched very slightly. It presents some analogy to the revolutionary worship of the Goddess of Reason. The symbol of the Positivist Deity is a woman of the age of thirty, with her son in her arms.3 Such a statue is to be fixed in each temple of Humanity, and a painted representation of the same figure is to be carried on banners in solemn processions. In all parts of the earth temples of Humanity will arise, but they must all turn towards Paris as the metropolis of the sacred race. At first and provisionally, the old churches may be used as they are gradually vacated, in the same manner" as Christian worship was carried on at first in pagan temples; "4 but ultimately the influence of Positivism upon architecture will be felt, and more appropriate buildings will spring up for human worship. While one side of the processional banner is to be blazoned with "the holy image" in white, the reverse side is to glow in green with "the sacred formula of Positivism, Love, Order, and Progress."

1 Cat. Pos., p. 136.

3 Ibid., p. 142.

2 Ibid., p. 137.

4 General View of Positivism, p. 370.

F